What will You Do When All Doors are Closed on You?

There are some incidents in life that we cannot explain. This is about a miracle that I personally experienced.

This happened to my family while I was studying in 9th standard.

In the front-side of our home in Thuravoor was a paddy field and an adjacent plain land belonging to one Antony, who coincidentally had been my mother’s student .

One day, Antony started building a shed (roofed structure) in his property. In few days we got the to know that he was planning to roll out a shrimp peeling unit. Those days peeling and deveining shrimp was not automated and were manually done by women workers, especially girls.

But we came to know the hazards of the industry, the worst one being, the noxious foul smell which was intolerable for vegetarians like us.

As a result of this agony, my father pleaded Antony to do it elsewhere as he had many properties then. My father advised him that it wasn’t good to start such a thing in front of a temple ( at the right side of our house was situated a dilapidated small temple). He refused to yield and insulted my father.

My father went to meet the Panchayat president, who happened to be a Marxist party leader. He said: “Master, at least hundred people will get job in that shed – so we cannot ask him to close it down”

Next, my father met the opposition leader (a congress man) who said: “Master, you know our party in the state is controlled by Christians and clergy. So I cannot go against him” The leader thus, gave a religious tone to it.

The following day, he went to meet the priest in the local church with this complaint. My father was teaching in a Christian management school, so they respected him. The priest was a good man but helpless. He said: “Sir, I understand your problem. But Church is surviving based on the donations given by people like him – so we can’t say anything against him. I suggest you to give a mass petition to the village officer…”

Father wrote down a petition and went to every neighbourhood. But most of them (including so-called Brahmins) refused to sign in it. Only few people signed and father filed the petition. But it was in vain.

My father met some community leaders and the management of the main temple seeking help. But they too turned down his request. They said the dilapidated temple adjacent to our house had no use for them. Except my mother, nobody was there to light lamp in that neglected temple.

Meanwhile, things were moving from bad to worse. We were not able to eat properly because of the foul smell coming from the shed. My mother would puke whatever she ate. And, mostly we were sick and down. It was not the smell alone, even the water start getting polluted (we have been drinking water from the pond).

There was no support or backing from anybody! A total helpless situation. Sleepless nights. A situation that cannot be expressed with written words. We were feeling totally down, desperate and frustrated. My younger siblings didn’t understand the situation as they were very small. But the smell was unbearable to them also.

One mid-night father suddenly told us: “I have approached everybody outside. I am a fool. When we have the most powerful person inside the house, why should I need anybody else…?”

“Who is it?” we asked.

“My Hanumanji (Anjaneya), who is the most powerful force in the universe. Let’s pray to him and seek his help.” (For non-Indian readers: Hanuman is monkey god, a deity worshiped by Hindus).

Staring from the following morning, ever day he woke up early morning, took bath, collected flowers and tulasi leaves and started Hanuman pooja – nothing much: just lighting lamp, offering flowers and tulsi leaves and praying earnestly.

What happened next was beyond any logic and explanation. As a science student, I still seek an explanation.

But this incident was beyond anything – Within a month, Antony closed down the Shed!

His downfall began – the countdown to his miseries had begun … We really don’t know the reasons. All his business ventures went down one by one… The happenings were beyond just coincidences…He started selling his properties.

One night, I woke up hearing people talking outside and calling my father. I looked through the window and found in the moonlight that it was Antony and few other neighbours. My younger brother told me: “Annu, let us take a danda (stick) with us. They may have come to attack our father…”
But my father said no need and he opened the door that leads to Veranda.

Antony was drunk. He told father: “Master, I want to apologize to you. Everybody says I am ruined because of Brahmin curse…Please withdraw your curse…”

My father said: “There is nothing like that. It’s superstition. I have never cursed you, though your deeds hurt us a lot. You are suffering only and ONLY due to your bad karma, that’s all. Nobody can help you Antony”
He didn’t understand that. I don’t remember the other talks. But after sometime, the neighbours took him away.

Antony was totally broke by then. He started visiting father quite often and borrowed money from home even for his expenses. Father would give him small amount of money seeing his tragedy, though we knew that he won’t pay it back.

One day he came with a proposal: “Sir, I owe you some money. Why can’t you give me a huge amount now? I can sell this property (where he had the Shed) to you…”

We didn’t have any money as we were financially struggling. But father thought it would be good idea to buy that property, otherwise tomorrow similar misfortunes may unfold. Father sold mother’s gold chain (the only one she had) and bangles and gave him the amount.

But he was very wily too. As the day of registration of the sale of property approached, he changed his colour and demanded more money (higher than market rate) for the land. Somehow we raised the money and bought the land.

By that time, the shed which was had water tanks, pillars etc was just not there – not even a piece of brick! We don’t remember what happened, but the fish cleaning tank and half of the area where the Shed was situated turned into a pond. Almost three fourth of the shed area turned into a pond.
In two years, a lotus flower appeared in that pond. I remember father plucking the first lotus flower and taking it to the Hanuman temple.

Compared to many miracles that occurred in your life, this may not sound as a bigger one. But the desperation, helplessness, frustration we had to face is beyond anyone’s wildest imagination.

Yes, there are some incidents in life that we cannot explain. It is not that those incidents don’t have logical and scientific explanation – but we cannot explain them,as we do not know the reasons behind them. No supernatural powers can exist in a natural universe. So we can’t attribute it to supernatural too.

There is an anticlimax to this incident. I had boasted about this among my school mates. One day the son of our traditional coconut-climber (we call him Velan or Kanakan) told me an incident. A local thief (coconut thief – during those days theft or robbery was a hard physical labour, now that every thief has joined politics and gets easy money, we don’t have such thieves in the villages) told him, it seems, he has seen a monkey in the coconut tree in our property. And there is no monkey even in our district. This cannot be his imagination, but could be a hallucination, or he might have seen any other thief in the tree. Or what?

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